


Once In My Life

by yet_intrepid



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon Compliant, Gen, Hunk & Pidge | Katie Holt Friendship, Hurt Matt, Hurt/Comfort, Set between s4 and s5, VLDgen, except I am not team science so there's no actual science in the fic, mostly there's just a lot of crying, sigh, team science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 14:42:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15366879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: Of course, Matt thinks, when the sword runs through his gut and twists there, blood squelching louder than the pain. Of course this is how this mission’s going to go. It’s just him, Hunk, and Pidge, and they’ve got no lions and no backup until they hit the rendezvous point. So of course, of course, this—right when he’s the responsible party—this is when Matt gets stabbed.[Written for the Voltron Gen Reverse Mini Bang 2018]





	Once In My Life

**Author's Note:**

> It was a delight to work with Nao ether-puff for this event! Her amazing art can be found [here](http://ether-puff.tumblr.com/post/176089988291/heres-my-piece-for-the-voltrongenminibang-i)!
> 
> Title is from "Once in my Life" by the Decemberists:
> 
>  
> 
> _oh for once in my, oh for once in my life_  
>  _could just something go, could just something go right?_

Of course, Matt thinks, when the sword runs through his gut and twists there, blood squelching louder than the pain. Of _course_ this is how this mission’s going to go. It’s just him, Hunk, and Pidge, and they’ve got no lions and no backup until they hit the rendezvous point. So of course, of course, this—right when he’s the responsible party—this is when Matt gets stabbed.

He can hear, distantly, Pidge screaming his name, and then he hears the blaster fire. Tries to duck it, realizes the sword’s still inside him, fumbles to catch the hilt as the stabber clunks down dead.

“Matt,” Pidge yells again, “Matt,” and he turns unsteadily to grin at her.

“I got it,” he says, and wrenches the blade out. It’s not one of those hooked ones, thankfully, or he’d really be in trouble. There’s still blood though. Lots.

“Oh no,” says Hunk, “no no no no no,” and Matt tries to turn and grin at him too but Pidge is running for  him now, the world moving fast and the blood faster.

Matt stumbles back against the console. “I’m dizzy.”

“Course you are, dumbass.” Pidge catches him. Only sort of, but pretty good given she’s still so tiny. Then she rips his cloak off and wads it against the wound, pressing hard. “Hunk, get that download finished and call our ride!”

“Can’t call from here,” Hunk says, and he starts to explain why, but he’s talking too fast and Matt’s too dizzy and he can’t quite hear things, really. Just a ringing—

Ringing ringing ringing—

“Matt,” says Pidge, desperate and harsh, like it’s the fourth time she’s tried to get his attention. He makes himself look at her. “Matt, sit down, asshole, hold this—” and she sets him down with a bump and squeezes his hand to the cloak. “You hear me?” she goes on, as she backs away. “Hold that and stay still.”

“Okay, okay,” Matt says. Is he slurring? He’s maybe slurring. God, how much blood has he lost? No, never mind, he’s not gonna look. He’s made that mistake before, and—nope, not gonna do that either. Not gonna think about before.

Hunk and Pidge are talking too loud, arguing over the console and tinkering with shit. Too loud, they’re gonna get heard. Gonna get more guards.

Ringing ringing—

“Guys,” he says. Yeah, he’s definitely slurring. “Guys?”

They’re so far away, way at the edges of his vision. Or maybe he’s just not seeing so great. Or hearing so great. Maybe he’s passing out.

There is no way in hell he’s passing out, he tells himself, and he holds the cloak tighter against his wound and grits his teeth. Where’s his staff? He needs his staff. He might have to fight—

His hand fumbles over the floor, feeling for it, finally gripping its familiar weight in his fingers. It’ll help him walk, too, he thinks, because even the thought of getting off the floor is making him dizzy. It’s a good staff.

He pats it, and then he laughs at himself, and then he remembers they’re still in a Galra outpost. The laugh goes cold in his throat and everything flickers in a way that’s way too familiar. Not the I’ve-lost-too-much-blood way, though that’s more frequent than he wishes it were. No.

“Pidge,” he tries to say, but she doesn’t look at him. She’s typing something at the console to his left, turned so her back is towards him. “Pidge?”

“Matt, I can’t—” she says, and her voice is tight. For a flicker of a second Matt worries he’s made her mad. They’re in a Galra outpost and mad isn’t good, mad is scary, mad means—

This is Pidge, he reminds himself. Your sister, dumbass. Not some officer or sentry.

“It’s okay,” he tells her. “I just wanted to say, I just wanted, uh.” He pauses. Words are not usually this hard, either for his brain or his mouth. “Dissociate,” he says, finally. “I—dissociate?”

“Hold on,” says Pidge, over Hunk muttering something. “We’re almost done. Two minutes, okay?”

Two minutes. Matt knows how many that is. Two sixties. Matt can count, even when the world is all frozen around him, too quiet and too loud all at once. He can count while he presses the cloak tight against the blood. Two sixties. Matt can do it.

One, two, three. Four. Five.

He starts slow, slower than he thinks is right, because that’s the easier way. If you rush and it’s not over by the time you finish, then it hurts. Inside. It hurts inside, like solitary, not outside like a rifle butt upside the head. Inside like missing Shiro and Dad and Mom and Pidge, not outside like the scar on his leg.

Matt grits his teeth and tells himself to stop thinking about metaphors. Just counting. Two sixties. Then he won’t be alone. He’s at forty now, going slow as he can. At least he thinks so. Did he skip some? He doesn’t know.

Ringing ringing ringing—

Also, everything hurts.

Nope, he tells himself, nope nope nope, because if he thinks about it that’ll only make it worse. Have to—have to think about other things. Forty-four, forty-five. Forty-seven. No, forty-six and forty-seven. It’s okay. It’s okay.

Even breathing hurts, the pain like a glaring light. He tries not to move so much with the air. He tries to keep counting. He tries—

“Matt,” Pidge is saying, running to him, and he’s only at fifty-two, look at that, he counted less than halfway.

“I did good,” he says with a effort, smiling at Pidge. What was she doing over there? He doesn’t know, even though he knows he should. Still, probably something awesome. “You did good too.”

Pidge rolls her eyes. “Let’s get out of here,” she says. “Hunk, help me with this guy, okay? He’s like a fucking mountain or something now.”

“Uh,” says Hunk. “Uh, maybe we should get that bandage tied in place first?”

“I can do it,” says Matt. He squints at the bandage. “I can—”       

“No,” says Pidge, “you can’t.” She crowds into his space, maneuvering the bloodied cape so half of it stays pressed against the wound while she rips off a couple strips to tie it around Matt’s abdomen. Hunk keeps a lookout while Pidge works. Hunk has a gun, Matt realizes. A really cool gun. He probably already knew about the cool gun, but he didn’t remember.

“Hey Hunk,” he says, as the three of them work together to get him to his feet. “Cool gun.”

Hunk looks at him like he’s lost his mind. Which hurts, but Matt has to admit it’s fair.

More than fair, really.

“Come on,” Pidge snaps, and they start to move. It’s like the worst possible three-legged race, awkward and desperate. But Matt tries not to think about it too hard, tries to hold on to the floaty dissociative feeling. He doesn’t want to be in his body right now.

Hunk’s got his bayard in his left hand, ready to fire; Pidge has hers collapsed down on her belt. Matt—Matt doesn’t have anything. Sometimes he has a staff, he remembers. Just a minute ago he had a staff. Now he doesn’t have anything, which makes him useless, which makes him a liability, which—

Which means they should leave him.

The rest of his mind, the rest of the world, is fuzzy, but that thought is clear. He should tell them to leave him. That’s the right thing to do. Only he’s selfish, and he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to be a prisoner again.

“Sentry,” hisses Pidge.

Matt half-collapses as she dives for shelter on one side of the corridor, but Hunk drags him behind a support on the other side. They crouch there, listening to the clunk of metal footsteps, and Matt lets his head loll back against the wall.

His staff, he keeps thinking. He doesn’t have his staff. Useless. Liability. Selfish. Should get left. Useless—

The pain is so bad. The footsteps are so loud. Matt grits his teeth and doesn’t whimper, but his eyes go tear-damp from the effort and he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to get himself up to move again.

Should get left, he thinks again, as Hunk tries to heave him to his feet. His knees buckle.

“Uh, Pidge,” says Hunk. “Uh, this isn’t, things aren’t good, uh—”

“Shut _up_ ,” Pidge says. “It’s just two turns to rendezvous. Carry him; I’ll call Shiro.”

“Okay,” Hunk squeaks, and he starts to lift Matt. Should get left, Matt thinks, and he tries to say it but it comes out too quiet, too slurred, and Hunk’s talking to himself anyway so he can’t hear. He gets Matt slung over his broad shoulders, then heaves up his gun. Pidge is talking in her helmet. Matt can’t hear her. Can’t hear anything.

Ringing ringing ringing—

He counts the jolting footsteps and, when the warm darkness swells up around him, he doesn’t fight.

 

 

\----

 

Some days, Hunk wonders how he’s tricked everyone into thinking he’s capable of being a paladin.

He’s better at it than he used to be. He throws up less, and he’s a little clearer-headed when things get rough. A little.

But some days, he still wonders, and today is one of those days.

Matt’s heavy on his shoulders and blood’s leaking through the makeshift bandage, sticking in Hunk’s hair. Which like, gross. Gross gross gross. And Pidge is still waiting for Shiro to pick up, which is a bad sign. Like, super bad.

Just two turns to rendezvous—if anyone’s there.

Hunk peers around the next corner. While he waits for a sentry to move further out of sight, he wishes again that Yellow and Green weren’t under repairs right now. It doesn’t feel good being without their lions. He’d tried to argue for coming down in a pod instead of having Shiro just drop them on the base, but the Altean pods are so damn conspicuous that even as he’d said it he’d known it was a bad idea.

Everything’s a bad idea lately.

Hunk sighs and slips around the corner, as deftly as he can with his massive bayard in hand and Matt slung over his shoulders. Pidge is swearing quietly over the comms.

“Dude,” Hunk whispers to her, “what the hell is going on?”

“Shiro won’t pick up,” she hisses back. “I think he’s out of range of the helmets.”

“But,” Hunk says, frowning, “these helmets reach pretty far. I mean the lions’ comms reach farther but the helmets, they’re still pretty good, you know?”

“I know,” Pidge snaps. She peers around the next corner; Hunk can hear her breath catch.

“What?” he asks, and then he looks himself.

Shiro’s lion isn’t in the hangar.

“Oh dude,” Hunk whispers, “this is not good. Wow, this is—this is really not good, wow, okay—”

“Shut _up_ ,” Pidge whispers. “I’m gonna call the castle.”

Hunk can’t cross his fingers because both his hands are full, but in his head he is crossing _all_ his fingers. He really does not want to be stranded here, and he really _really_ doesn’t want to think about what must be going on with the rest of the team to make them not pick up. They wouldn’t just ditch, right, like Hunk and Pidge are the only ones who can fly Yellow and Green, and they don’t even have a pod to escape in and Matt, Matt is—

Matt is dying, Hunk’s brain supplies helpfully, before he can make it stop. Matt’s dying.

“Hunk,” Pidge hisses, “shut up!”

“I’m not saying anything!” Hunk shoots back.

“You’re worrying so hard I can hear it,” Pidge says. “Let me fucking think, okay?”

“How can you hear me worrying when I’m not even saying anything?” Hunk’s annoyed, and he hates this, and they can’t stay here in the corridor squeezed against the supports. They have to move. They have to get out. It won’t be long before somebody discovers the virus they came in to plant, the virus that’s designed to erase coalition intel, and when that happens—

Well, when that happens, they’re fucked.

Pidge pulls off her helmet and flings it angrily to the floor.

“Dude,” Hunk exclaims, “you’re gonna get us caught!”

Pidge ignores that. She picks up her helmet and shoves it back on, then points around the corner towards the hangar. “We’re gonna steal that pod.”

“Okay,” Hunk says, slowly. “Uh, how?”

“We just are,” Pidge says.

“That pod,” Hunk points out, “is in a hangar full of Galra.”

“So we’ll shoot them,” says Pidge.

Hunk frowns. “You mean _I’ll_ shoot them? While I carry this guy around and try to not get him shot? When he’s already been stabbed? Pidge, I don’t like this!”

“Shut up,” says Pidge.

“Stop saying that!” Hunk shifts his shoulders, trying to readjust Matt’s weight; Matt whimpers reflexively. At the sound, Pidge’s annoyed face goes all soft and terrified. It hurts Hunk’s heart.

“Okay,” he says. “We’ll steal the pod.”

Pidge almost smiles. “On three. One, two—”

“Three,” Hunk says with her, and leaps out with his gun blazing.

He gets the closest three sentries in one burst, which gives Pidge a tiny window of time to slip past him and start going for the pod. But the rest of the sentries are quick, and Hunk’s no good at dodging, especially when he’s trying to keep Matt from falling off his shoulders.

“No,” he mutters, trying to run and shoot and hold onto Matt at the same time, “no no no no no—”

Pidge is yelling somewhere and Hunk can hear her bayard, but he can’t afford to turn and look. The sentries are closing in, dozens of them, and Hunk takes a couple hits. His armor keeps him alive, but it doesn’t keep him balanced.

He stumbles. Loses his footing. Loses Matt, who thuds to the ground.

“No, fuck, no—” and then there’s officers, Galra warriors, closing in too.  Where’s Pidge? God, this is bad, this is so bad, why the hell is the team out of range, they’re going to _die_ —

Hunk tries to back up, tries to get his back to the wall, but Matt’s motionless behind him and Hunk can’t stop shooting to pick him up. Which means that, of course, he’s wide open to get flanked. Which means, of course, that the damn officers do in fact flank him.

Which means they’re in range of Matt.

“No,” Pidge is screaming in the distance, where she’s tangled in a massive fight of her own. “No, please!”

And so Hunk does the only thing he knows to do.

He lets his bayard revert, clips it to his belt, and holds up his hands.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, guys, I’m—I’m surrendering, okay? Just don’t kill us. We’re surrendering.”

Pidge glares at him across the hangar, but copies his motions. The sentries stop shooting; one of them drags Matt up by his hair and one wrist.

“What do we do with them?” the sentry asks, while Matt screams himself awake.

The lead officer shrugs. “Get them locked up,” he says. “We’ll have to alert command.”

“Yes sir,” says the sentry. He tries to make Matt stand, which Hunk could have told him wouldn’t work, but is anybody asking Hunk? No. Nobody’s asking Hunk, which means Matt just crashes back to the ground, groaning raggedly.

“Hey uh,” says Hunk, as they cuff his hands behind his back and take his collapsed bayard. “Could you, uh, could you maybe be a little nicer to that guy? Like you already stabbed him, so maybe just consider, maybe, that he doesn’t need to be tossed around like that if you want him to still be alive by the time you hear back from command?”

They ignore him. Hunk sighs and falls into line as they push him and Pidge back into the corridor. Somebody’s dragging Matt by his (thankfully uncuffed) wrists, and through the helmet comms, Hunk can hear Pidge’s breathing stutter like she’s trying not to cry.

It’s okay, he tries to tell himself. The team will figure out that something’s wrong when they don’t make rendezvous. They’ll—they’ll do _something_.

But maybe not before Matt dies, the unhelpful part of his brain points out. After all, you can’t exactly trust the Galra to set him up with a healing pod and all that. And if Matt dies, Pidge—

Hunk can’t think about that. He can’t let himself think about that.

So he just follows Pidge into the cell that one of the sentries opens up, tries to cushion Matt’s fall when another of the guards half-flings him in, and then sits down cross-legged on the bare cold floor and tries to think of a plan.

“Am I cool?”

Hunk looks up. It’s Matt, lying splayed out and bloody in the middle of the cell, and smiling at him. Waiting for an answer.

“Uh, yeah?” says Hunk, bewildered. “Yeah dude, uh, you’re totally cool. And also delirious. And also covered in a lot of blood, so I’m not sure why being cool matters right now, but uh, sure?”

“Cool people don’t get stabbed,” Matt informs him. He waves a listless hand. “Cool people are too cool to get stabbed.”

“Matt,” says Pidge, “what the hell.”

“Pidge?” Matt’s face lights up, then falls. “They got you. I hoped they wouldn’t get you. But don’t worry, okay, I’m cool and I’ll protect you from—from the big bad aliens, I’ll—”

He pauses, straining for breath.

“Matt,” Pidge says tightly, “you need to be quiet right now.”

Matt’s eyes fly wider, darting around the dimly-lit cell. “Why? Are they coming back?”

“No,” says Hunk. Pidge glares at him and he fumbles, trying to come up with an explanation that isn’t _the Galra will hear you and come hurt your baby sister,_ because seriously, what the hell, Pidge, that’s not an okay thing to make him think, even if it is mostly true. “You just—you need to go to sleep. So you can feel better.”

“I can’t go to sleep,” Matt says. It’s clear that every breath, every word is hurting him, but Hunk has to admit he understands the need to talk. “When, when I sleep, they come back. They come hurt you. Shiro, I can’t let them—”

“Shiro’s not here,” Pidge snaps. Hunk can see her hands working behind her back, trying to fiddle out of the cuffs. “Matt, come on. What happened earlier today?”

Matt’s brow scrunches up. “They took Shiro?” he guesses.

Pidge groans, then throws Hunk a desperate look. Hunk throws her one in return. Why should he know how to deal with this? He’s no good with flashbacks, and he’s _definitely_ no good with blood. He’s an engineer, that’s all, and sometimes he’s a pilot sort of but not really, and he can shoot okay, but none of that is useful right now.

Some days he wonders if he’s cut out to be a paladin, and today is really, _really_ one of those days.

 

\----

 

Of course, Pidge thinks darkly, as she fidgets with her cuffs and finds nothing—no spring, no gap. Of course this is how it’s going to go.

She shouldn’t have trusted the happiness that came with finding Matt. Shouldn’t have gotten careless. The odds were always against them, and their reunion hasn’t changed that. She shouldn’t have forgotten that she could still lose him, even after all this.

Pidge sighs. Matt’s quiet now, which hopefully means he’s resting. His eyes are still open, though, and Pidge knows the expression on his face because it’s just like that time she not-quite-accidentally kneed him in the junk.

Except worse. A lot worse.

Anyway, point is, Pidge knows what Matt looks like when he’s in pain, and she’s never seen it as bad as this. Not during the Great Migraine Month of Sixth Grade, when she’d been little enough to believe his dumb extended story about how his head was literally going to explode. Not the time that he was allergic to the painkillers the doctor gave him after his wisdom teeth got removed and, like a dumbass, told Mom he’d just tough it out instead of going back in for a new prescription. Not ever.

Which _doesn’t_ mean this is the worst pain Matt’s been in ever, but that’s not a thing she wants to think about.

Pidge keeps exploring the cuffs with her fingers, because she’s no quitter, but she’s not really thinking about it. She’s having a hard time thinking about anything, honestly. Matt—

She knows what Hunk thinks. She can feel the fear oozing out of him, and it makes her angry. Which is rude, probably, but Pidge has bigger concerns right now than whether she’s being rude.

Like the fact that Hunk is right. Like the fact that Matt is dying, right here in front of her, on the floor of a Galra cell.

“Pidge,” Matt slurs. “Hey Pidge?”

Pidge scooches a little closer to him. “Yeah?”

“You gotta get out,” he says. His shaking hand moves slowly towards her knee. “Pidge, you—you can’t stay here. Okay? If you, if you get a chance—”

“I’m not running without you,” Pidge tells him. “Dumbass.”

Matt doesn’t smile. “Pidge. Promise.”

“No!” Pidge can hardly meet his eyes; her gaze keeps getting drawn back to the blood-soaked bandage.

“You can’t stay here,” Matt repeats. Distress spikes his exhausted voice. “You can’t stay here.”

“None of us are staying here,” Pidge says. She looks over to Hunk, making motions with her head to try and tell him to call for help again. “We’re all leaving. Okay?”

Matt laughs weakly. “Don’t—don’t lie to yourself. You’re too smart for that.”

“Fuck off,” says Pidge. In her helmet, she can hear Hunk talking on the comms, but there’s still no response.

Matt looks up at her, eyes struggling to focus. “I love you, Pidge.”

Pidge can’t say it back. Not because it isn’t true, but because it would make this real. She just looks at him, wrestling her hands against the cuffs to see if she can slip out and at least hold him.

When she’s silent, Matt’s gaze slips away from hers. He shuts his eyes and his hand drops from her knee to the floor.

“Hey,” Pidge says. “Hey, don’t—Matt. Hey.”

“Yeah?” he asks.

“I love you too,” she says, and it feels like a betrayal. Like giving up hope. But a smile pushes through the pain-contortions of Matt’s face, and it’s almost worth it.

“You’re so badass,” he says, looking back up. The slurring’s getting worse; Pidge leans closer to make sure she can hear. “You’re—you’re so much braver than me.”

“Shut up.” Pidge is not going to cry. She’s not.

“I didn’t want the Galra to get you.” The smile’s gone again. “They’re—they’re bad. They’re really bad. Every time they take Shiro away he comes back all bloody and tired and, Pidge, you have to get out. You have to—to leave me.”

“Shut up,” Pidge says again, except this time she maybe is crying.

Matt looks at her very seriously. “I’m gonna die,” he says. “But you don’t have to.”

“I take it back.” Pidge swallows hard. “I hate you. Stop talking about dying.”

“Pidge,” Matt says. He sounds broken.

“Shh,” says Pidge, and Matt closes his eyes again.

She watches him super closely after that, keeping an eye on his breathing. On the comms, Hunk’s voice gets progressively squeakier and faster, but Pidge is too worn to be annoyed anymore.

And then it happens.

“Hunk!” Shiro exclaims over the comms. “Hunk, Pidge, come in!”

“Shiro!” Hunk struggles to keep his voice to a whisper. “Where were you? You missed the rendezvous and Matt got stabbed and we got captured trying to steal a pod and, Shiro, you gotta get here soon—”

“Matt’s dying,” Pidge interrupts. “What’s your ETA?”

Shiro hesitates just a fraction of a second. “Ten minutes. Can you hold out that long?”

“Ten minutes to the rendezvous point or ten minutes to our cell?” Pidge asks.

“Ten minutes to you.” Shiro’s voice is strained but sure. “Keith’s with me in Black, and Coran’s feeding us your position through the castle. We’ll get you out, just hang tight.”

“Uh, they took our bayards,” Hunk adds. “That’s gonna complicate things.”

“I’ll have Keith drop me off at the command hub to see if I can find the bayards,” Shiro says. “Then I’ll fight my way through to you, and Keith will pick us up at the rendezvous point.”

“Got it,” says Pidge, and then hesitates. “You’ll tell us later why you missed the rendezvous, right?”

“Will do,” Shiro says.

The comm goes quiet. Hunk exhales long and loud; his relief is a physical weight off Pidge’s shoulders. So she blinks away her stupid tears and edges closer to Matt, touching his shoulder with her knee.

“Matt,” she says, wondering if he’ll wake up enough that she can give him the good news. He’s still breathing but it looks fainter, and Pidge vaguely recalls reading something about needing to keep people awake when they’ve lost a lot of blood. Or maybe that was only with concussions? She really needs to brush up on this stuff. “Matt, hey.”

He squints up at her, eyes unfocused. “Shiro?”

“He’s on his way,” she promises.

Matt bites his lip. “You gotta,” he says, “you gotta take care of Shiro. Dad, you—after—when I’m—” He breaks off again, struggling for air and courage.

“You aren’t going to die,” Pidge says. Her gut is tight with worry, with missing Dad. “Shiro’s coming and he’s going to get us all out.”

“Oh,” says Matt. He still sounds dazed. “Dad, it hurts.”

“I know,” Pidge says. “I know; I’m sorry.”

“Hurts,” Matt repeats, and Pidge can’t help it. She starts crying again, really crying, not just a few stoic tears but floods of them, soaking into the padded parts of her helmet. Hunk’s worrying about her too, now; she can feel it. But he apparently remembers that she doesn’t like to be fussed over when she’s sad, because he stays quiet.

And it’s in that quiet, in the time-slowing rhythm of Hunk’s jittering foot and Matt’s harsh breaths and Pidge’s sobs, that the noise of combat starts to filter in through their cell door. It’s in that quiet that the door slides up to reveal Shiro, half-breathless, glowing in the light of his hand pressed to the panel.

“Shiro!” cheers Hunk, and Shiro smiles. He cuts through their cuffs, hands back their bayards, and lifts Matt gently.

Then they run. Hunk sprays covering fire ahead of them, yelling like a berserker; Pidge watches Shiro’s back so he doesn’t have to think about anything but Matt, who lies bleeding in his arms.

The hangar comes into view and Black is there amid the wreckage and the blaster bolts.

“Good to see you,” Keith calls over the comms. Black opens her mouth and that’s it, it’s done, they’re all scooped to safety and hurtling off into space.

Panting hard, Pidge falls back against a cool wall just for a second. Hunk lets his bayard collapse down. But Shiro doesn’t stop moving, even for a second. Keith is pulling some wild evasive maneuvers but Shiro walks, steady as anything, to a clear patch of floor where he can lay Matt down.

“Hunk,” he says, “if you could dig out the first aid kit? It should be behind that panel there. Pidge—”

Pidge rushes over to help. She keeps Matt’s head supported while Shiro sets him on the lion’s floor, as carefully as he’d set a sleeping baby in a crib. Matt groans faintly, but doesn’t open his eyes.

“He’ll be okay,” Pidge says, like saying it will make it true. Her voice comes out small and tired. “Right, Shiro?”

Shiro turns his head to smile at her, just for a fraction of a second. “The castle is opening a wormhole. We’ll have him into a pod in just a few minutes.”

Pidge doesn’t miss the fact that this isn’t an answer. Still, she follows Shiro’s first aid instructions mechanically, listens as he talks Matt through every action, every touch of his hands. Matt doesn’t seem to hear, but it makes Pidge feel a little better, so she hopes some part of Matt is comforted by it too.

When Keith flies them through the wormhole, Matt is still breathing.

 

\----

 

Of course, Matt thinks, as the cryopod sleep fades slowly from his body. Of course this is how this mission ended.

And the thought should be tinged with despair, but it isn’t. Instead, Matt’s overwhelmed with relief because he can count on this now, because he can count on things going badly and still turning out okay in the end. Because it’s him in the pod and not Pidge.

The pod hisses and the glass starts to slide up, and Matt’s suddenly aware of some very loud yelling.

“I don’t care!” It’s Pidge, fists clenched as she stands over Shiro’s seated form. “You _ditched us_! You can’t—you can’t _do_ that, Shiro—”

“Uh, guys,” interrupts Hunk from the other side of the room, just as Matt tumbles out of the pod.

They all three rush to him. Matt still bumps his knees a bit, but a tangle of warm arms prevents him from falling on his face. Once he’s settled on the steps, Pidge clings to him, and Hunk and Shiro back off to give them space.

“Fuck,” Pidge whispers, as she hides her face in his shoulder, “fuck, Matt, I thought—”

Matt nods solemnly. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I—I didn’t mean to scare you, Pidgey, promise.”

He doesn’t remember much past the stabbing part, to be honest, but as Pidge burrows further into his shirt he realizes that it must have been bad. He wonders what he said while he was out of it, wonders how close he came to not making it out.

Pidge’s tears leave wet blotches and her glasses dig into his collarbone. Matt cries a little too, to be totally honest, but he hides it by tucking his face into his sister’s hair. For some reason, crying in front of Shiro just makes him feel…not good. A little flashback-y, a little embarrassed.

“Hey uh,” says Hunk, when Pidge has mostly cried herself out, “can I get in on this hugging, man? Cause I seriously need some hugging.”

Leaving his right arm wrapped around Pidge, Matt opens his left up to Hunk. He expects Shiro to bring it in, too, but—

Matt lifts his head to see what’s going on. Shiro’s still hanging back, standing almost at attention with a distant stare.

“Dude,” says Hunk, noticing. “Come on.”

“No,” Pidge says to Matt’s shirt. “I don’t—Hunk, he left us!”

“Yeah, and you haven’t let him even try to explain why,” Hunk points out. “Shiro, _come on_.”

Shiro hesitates.

“Shiro,” Matt starts.

“No,” Pidge interrupts, “Matt, you almost died because _Shiro_ couldn’t follow through—”

“Shiro,” Matt repeats, a little firmer. “Come here and explain.”

Shiro still doesn’t come into the hug. But he does get a little nearer, settling on the floor in front of them with his legs crossed and his hands anxious in his lap.

“I don’t want his goddamn explanation,” Pidge growls. “Matt!”

“He’s our teammate,” Matt tells her. “He deserves a chance.”

Pidge pulls a face, but nods. “Fine.”

Shiro takes a deep breath. “I tried to comm you,” he says. “But it must have been while you were still in the hub, because the interference was—all I could get was static. And I called the castle, but Coran couldn’t get through to you either.”

“Okay,” says Matt. He rubs Pidge’s back, calming and soft. “And what were you trying to tell us?”

“Keith,” Shiro says. “He was in Black with me when I got there, remember? It—it was an emergency. He was on a mission for the Blade and it went wrong and I, I thought I could just scoop in and pick him up and still make it to the rendezvous.”

“Why couldn’t you send Lance and Allura?” demands Pidge. “They’ve got functional lions too, you know.”

“They’re in negotiations, remember?” Hunk puts in. “With that really gnarly termite-looking queen halfway across the galaxy?”

Pidge huffs. “What, and our literal survival didn’t merit a negotiations break?”

“Pidge,” Matt says. “In war—”

“We have to make hard choices,” she parrots. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

“Pidge,” says Shiro. His voice is quiet, but determined. “I made the wrong call. I should’ve come up with another way, and I’m sorry.”

Pidge glares at him. “Yeah,” she says. “You should’ve.”

“We all made it, though,” Matt points out. “Yeah, it wasn’t ideal, but—we’re alive. We’re safe.”

“Barely.” She pulls out of the hug and shifts her glare to Matt. “Listen, you might not remember bleeding out all delirious in a Galra cell, but it wasn’t fun to see, okay?”

Matt winces. Shit.

“Yeah, uh, about that,” says Hunk. “Cause like, can we talk about that? The whole _every time they take Shiro he comes back bloody_ thing? Or the _escape without me and leave me here to die_ thing? Or the thing where you thought Pidge was your dad?”

Shit, shit, shit. Matt doesn’t remember any of that. He must’ve had some kind of a flashback.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I—don’t really wanna talk about it, no.”

“Too bad,” says Pidge. “Because I need to talk about it.”

“Then talk about it,” Matt says, a little more testily than he means to.

“It sucked.” Pidge crosses her arms. “Also? Never do it again.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” Matt scrubs a hand through his hair. “Like what do you want me to do? Apologize for being stabbed and delirious and kinda traumatized? Because for the record, Pidge, I didn’t sign up to be any of those things.”

There’s silence for a moment. Matt flicks his gaze up, makes awkward eye contact with Shiro, looks away again.

“I hate you,” Pidge says at last, staring at her knees. “I hate when you’re right. I know you didn’t do it on purpose, and I know Shiro was trying to do the right thing, and I know Hunk wasn’t worrying so loud just to annoy me, and I still just hate it. I hate—I hate all of this.”

“It’s okay to hate it,” Shiro says softly. “It’s okay that you’re angry.”

Pidge sounds like she’s about to cry again. “It doesn’t feel okay.”

“I know,” Shiro says.

And of course, of course it ends like this: Matt pulling Pidge back into his arms, Hunk crowding in too. All of them crying. And Shiro hesitating, lingering outside the embrace until at last Pidge reaches for him, welcomes him in.

“You were so brave,” Shiro says, as he wraps his arms around all of them, “all of you, so brave.”

“I was so scared,” Hunk whispers, and Pidge echoes, “I was so scared—”

Shiro just holds them close.

And of course this is how it goes, Matt thinks, in the sweaty tangle of limbs and tears. Of course, somehow, in spite of everything—it ends in comfort.

“I don’t really hate you,” Pidge says to Matt, low. “I, you know. I love you.”

Matt pokes her in the side, laughs as she fakes indignation. “I love you too,” he says. “I love you too.”


End file.
